(2)Joker vs (15)Claire Redfield 2018
Ulti's Analysis For those playing the home game, you might be wondering why I'm calling him Joker in the PCA and having the page name on the Wiki named "Joker" instead of "Ren Amamiya". To the surprise of everyone and for the first time in my entire life, I'm going to agree with Persona fans. Now in the interest of full disclosure, I wasn't planning on it originally. I was actually fully prepared to come in here, act as obnoxious as possible, and aim my most scathing possible rant at you people. You were going to get compared to the worst parts of our culture, you were getting the Election 2016 crybaby treatment, you were going to get absolutely shit on about how Claire pulled off the greatest upset possible due to Allen fixing his mistake and calling him Joker in the poll instead of Ren, the works. It was going to be awesome, and you would have deserved every second of it for how you act in every single Persona match in these contests. There is no fanbase more obnoxious in contest history, and there have been a ton of bad ones. And then this happened. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67xaZRZZ568 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFgF6wkP2iU And it wasn't just that. I actively tried looking for anyone, literally anyone, to call the guy "Ren". I didn't find a single example. Not one. So you know what? You guys win. With being in Smash, you're in the big time now and I'm going to give you a fair shot to redeem yourselves. I know exactly how happy you are right now, and I'm not going to take that from you. Plus with me having never actually played a Persona game and only going on contest behavior, for all I know those games deserve their fandom. Who really knows. You have a good thing here, Persona honks. Don't fuck it up. I don't change my mind on people very often! So with that said, let's go back to the beginning and give a fair rundown. When the bracket first came out, Joker was foolishly listed in the bracket as "Ren Amamiya". For those not aware of how absolutely stupid this was, imagine Revolver Ocelot listed as "Adamska", Lightning listed as "Claire Farron", The Boss listed as "Mercury Lady", or Big Boss listed as "Ishmael". It was laughably, unforgivably dumb. On top of that, look at these match pictures. http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/gallery/albums/cb10/95.png http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/gallery/albums/cb10/96.png This was the biggest mess of round 1 by a mile, and Allen knew it. By the time the match happened, it was more or less confirmed without being directly confirmed when Allen changed the name to Joker in our brackets that the poll would have his name on it. But by then, the damage was done. People had long since made their picks, and as you can see by the prediction percentage Claire had just enough support to get just enough bracket/early/registered votes to win this match if it was close. I have no doubts this would have been a closer match if things were named correctly from the jump and Joker were given a proper picture. That doesn't forgive the laughably awful Claire picture either, just for the record. Then the match started and all hell broke loose. Well by 2018 standards, anyway. Things were dead even at first, then Claire took a small lead, then Joker erased the lead before falling a bit. Then in a flash, Claire just buried the guy. Two hours in, these two were separated by 97 votes. This match was stone cold over 30 minutes later, and with how close this was to start we can chalk this thing up to the margin of error. Does Joker win with a fair shake in naming and picture? Probably not, actually. Claire's picture was also trash and she has RE2 hype behind her. But the fact we can even have a gray area argument about this entire result is not good. Sure the winner was destined to lose to Sub-Zero anyway. So what? The guru was only won by 3 points. I won a contest on a tiebreaker. These points matter. You can't have doubts about results like this, and well-run stuff makes sure this happens as little as possible. I'll give Allen credit for correcting his mistake but it was bad to make this mistake in the first place. I made a bunch of polls mid contest asking people how important the match pic was when voting. I was expecting virtually no 'yes' votes. To my shock, something like 35-40% of people vote based on picture! What in the actual hell? So yeah, Joker got robbed and the Persona fans are being given one great writeup and one fair shot to be mature moving forward. Don't let me down, bros! Also, level with me. Are the games any good? Oh last point before I forget. Before this contest only one 2 seed had ever lost to a 15. The Boss beat Nathan Drake. In this contest it happened THREE TIMES. This match, Aeris > Waluigi, and Bomberman > Kazuma Kiryu. The seeding in this contest was so messed up. Lightning_Strikes's Analysis What happened?: Early on this seemed like an easy win for Joker, but then as less recognisable characters and avatars faltered, as well as Resident Evil looking good, this started to go to Claire. Joker, at least, did not get screwed with a name nobody knew. The match started neck and neck but then Claire pulled away, with Joker turning out to be very frontloaded indeed. What could this mean?: When Leon beat down Dragonborn I knew an avatar from a strong, popular RPG would struggle with a beloved Resident Evil character. Joker just does not have enough to him despite the strength of his game. At least he's a lot better than Yu probably. As for Claire I'll say it again, Resident Evil is back. Safer777's Analysis This match was strange. When I made my bracket I didn't even noticed that this is Joker from Persona 5, because they don't use real names in the Persona games for the main characters. You can give them any names too,. But when I saw he was the Persona 5 main character I picked Joker. The whole Crew picked Joker too. Claire was in 3 contests before and she hadn't a win. But I made a mistake. Persona is weak here in this site. Really weak. There was even a controversy with Joker's real name so we got both names! It should have been only Joker by the way. And the picture wasn't him in the traditional Joker Outfit too! So many mistakes in this match. Come on now! I know the board loves Persona too but yeah. Also the instant RE 2 remake was announced it is in top 10 boards in the PS 4 section here. And you know who is in RE 2? Leon and Claire. So Claire managed to win a victory. Strangely enough for a while Joker was winning! Persona 5 is in my top 3 JRPG's. It is way too good! Still out of the 5 main RE characters only Leon and Claire advanced. RE 2 remake boost confirmed! And oh yeah another 2 seed lost. This is the 3rd time on this contest too which is a record! I think like 2 seeds have ever lost from a 15 seed in all contests ever too! And in this contest we had 3 losing! Man the seeding was so bad. Tsunami's Analysis This was our second accreditation controversy, and the one that actually meant something. The name "Ren Amamiya" comes from the anime, not the game itself; like Yu Narukami when Persona 4 first came out and all of the SMT protagonists before him, the P5 protagonist was not initially given a "canon name". (Yu's canon name was eventually established by spinoffs.) As such, failing to credit him as Joker--especially in combination with an unmasked match pic--was tantamount to sabotage. I picked Joker in my bracket, but had Claire in my Oracle when it was initially believed that the single-word accreditation in the match would be "Ren". Turns out, I shouldn't have wavered on that when Allen changed it to what it should have been all along. So was this a case of old > new, or merely DAF? (Oh, come on, you know full well you're not looking at what she's got going on in the front. The picsmiths certainly weren't in 2013.) https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/board8/images/f/f4/5204.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20170323064512 At any rate, this represents Claire's first contest win, which is all kinds of hilarious because the 2002 X-Stats say she could have reached Round 3 if she hadn't been horribly screwed by bracket placement. She finished 13th, breaking 30%, in the Raw X-Stats, following a fairly close (at least by 2002 standards) loss to Tidus of all people. Then she disappeared until the Female Bracket in 2006, where she lost to Kairi. And after that she didn't return until that 2013 match that I linked the match pic from, where she literally has to deal with booty SFF. Joker was later announced as a DLC character for Smash Ultimate, making everyone wonder if he'd have won the match had that happened earlier. He might have, but I feel like Claire could've still gotten by. Category:2018 Contest Matches